Do you remember the fierce storms we had a couple of weeks ago, which included high winds, thunder and lightening. The next morning after a particularly stormy night hubby wandered up to the plot, fearful that the greenhouse would no longer be standing, it was, but he found the pear tree had shed what appeared to be most of its fruit. He came back with a carrier bag full of skinny pears, fortunately I know that pears don’t ripen until they are picked so I kept them in a big bowl on a sunny table and sure enough they gradually ripened and we have been using them to eat or in pies or crumbles. Funnily enough, I noticed at the greengrocers a few days later a huge amount of these very same skinny pears at a ridiculously cheap price, I pointed them out to my Dad and said, ‘those are windfalls’ to which he agreed.

Slowly the apple tree

and pear tree

have been filling out. And low and behold these are the best pears we have ever grown.

I picked them all yesterday, gave half a dozen pears and four apples to my Dad who had enjoyed some of the wind fallers previously and had proclaimed them very juicy, so he was very happy to receive these fully grown versions.

and kept the rest for us, some to eat now, the rest in my fridge to eek out to my Dad and ourselves during the next few weeks, having no freezer space at the moment it’s the best I can do. We plan to make smoothies with some of the tiniest apples and I still have apple cider vinegar left over from last year so that is not such a priority this year.